The Phoenix's Child
by mosylu
Summary: It's been twelve and a half years since Emily Prentiss died in a terrible fire, but her secrets are rising from the ashes . . . Canon up to "Coda." After that, I make no promises. Most recently posted: Part 6. Now complete.
1. Chapter 1

A/N - I'm still working on War Crimes, honest! It's going slow at the moment, and I'd really like to have the whole thing complete and polished before I start posting again. I wanted to write this, even though it'll be AU shortly, because the idea just grabbed me. The Scientists in the Field convention is not a real thing (curses, because I personally would have loved to go to something like that as a kid), but I did name it after a real, and altogether awesome, book series for kids. And finally - there WILL be Emily and Reid in this story. Soon. Patience, my pretties.

* * *

Prologue: The Phone Call

_Dallas Field Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation_

Derek Morgan hung up his phone and stared at it. This made the fourth call from his old team members in Quantico in as many hours, and all with the same request.

Talk to Reid.

Morgan was lost to account for it. Although across the country from each other now, they still spoke regularly. The younger man had sounded like himself just last week. He used to go through bad patches every year or so, but not for a long time. Besides, those were generally in March, around the anniversary of the fire, but this was September. And though Hotch's team had just closed an ugly case, there had been ugly cases before.

So . . . what the hell?

He went over and closed his office door before dialing. His friend picked up after the second ring. "Morgan. Hey."

"Hiya, kid."

Normally Reid would have said something about how he really couldn't be considered a kid anymore, and how in Ancient Greece or the Middle Ages or whenever-the-hell, forty-three actually would have been considered quite elderly. Today, he just said, "You need a consult?"

"Not today, brainiac. Hotch asked me to call you."

"Oh?"

"So did Garcia. And Manning. And - "

"I get it," Reid said. "They're concerned."

Well, that was something. At least he realized it. "Awright. Can you tell me why?"

"This last case was difficult."

Penelope had told him it was kids. Raped, killed, dismembered, dumped. Morgan automatically glanced at the picture on his desk. His own daughter was eight, only a few years younger than the girls who'd died in Laramie. His stomach turned over at even having the two thoughts next to each other. "Sounded like a nasty one," he said.

"It's never easy when it's children, Morgan, you know that. We were all affected."

"From the sounds of it, this case hit you hardest."

"Sometimes they do."

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. Jesus, twenty years and Reid still thought he could stonewall him. "Not for no reason. C'mon, man, talk to me."

Silence. Then Reid said slowly, "Do you know the Scientists in the Field convention?"

Morgan frowned, trying to place it. "Atlanta, right? The careers one for high schoolers and college kids?"

"Yeah. The Bureau sent me this year. After my session I got to talking to some of the younger kids. Prodigies, in fact. Startlingly intelligent."

Morgan started to smile. "Sounds like someone I know."

"Then Hotch called me in, and I went right from Atlanta to Laramie."

The smile slid off his face. "Jesus."

"Yeah. These kids, you know, they were so . . . bright. Enthusiastic. Amazing."

He must've really connected with them. Morgan wondered if Reid was looking to settle down finally. Or at least, settle down in a different way than he already was, with a family instead of stacks of books, every sci-fi DVD known to man, and a cranky cat.

Sometimes he thought that all of Reid's hopes for the future had gone underground along with Emily Prentiss. Maybe they were starting to resurrect.

"Then I saw what was done to those girls," Reid continued. "All that potential, all that energy, all that hope. Everything. Destroyed. All it takes is one sociopath."

Morgan sighed. This was why cases with kids were the worst. They all knew it. "Yeah. It's rough. I don't know what to tell you about that. But listen, Reid. That's why they've got us. Right? We hunt down the monsters. It's what we do."

There were several seconds of silence on the line, and then Reid said, "Yeah. They've got us."

They talked for several more minutes, and by the time Morgan hung up, he felt better about his friend's state of mind. He knew he hadn't gotten the whole story, not by a long shot, but he could be patient. And Reid was right, sometimes cases did just hit you harder than expected. Especially one like that.

His phone rang again. He glanced at the caller ID and smiled. "Hey, baby."

"Hi, Daddy. How do you spell photosynthesis?"

"Girl, why you calling me up and asking me that?"

"Cuz you're my daddy and you know everything?"

"Uh-huh," he said. "I do. And what I know is that you should be doing your homework yourself. Didn't your mama and I buy you a big-ass dictionary to look up long words like photosynthesis?"

She gasped, big and dramatic. "Daddy, that's a dollar for the swear jar."

"Put it on my tab," he said. "And use your dictionary."

"I tried. S'not in there." Her voice turned wheedling. "Pleeeease? Pleasepleaseplease for your shiny copper Penny baby?"

He rolled his eyes but couldn't stop the indulgent grin. "I'll give you two letters and you go from there. P-H."

"P-H," she muttered. He could almost see her, keying it into her tablet reader. "Oh! Got it!"

"Who's your best daddy?"

"Santa Claus."

"Uh-uh, try again."

"You, you, you!" There was a muted beep. "Oh, Ree's calling. See you later, Daddy."

"Love you, baby." He hung up and looked at the file that had been open on his computer before Hotch called. It was a report on the last case his team had been sent out on. A sexual sadist who'd killed four men before they'd caught him.

Yeah, they were the ones who hunted the monsters, and in a sunny yellow house thirty minutes away, chattering away to her friend Ree instead of doing her homework, was the reason why.


	2. Chapter 2

_Atlanta - Scientists in the Field Convention_

Elizabeth waited quietly until the crowd around the tall, skinny man had dispersed somewhat. She could be patient; there was nothing in this room for another hour, and besides, it was highly interesting to listen to the questions the other people in the talk had for Dr. Spencer Reid.

He didn't exactly look like his pictures, she reflected. Of course, the features were just as angular and his hair, brown spotted with grey, was just as disorderly. But he always looked stiff and serious. Here, talking about math, his eyes lit up and his face eased into smiling lines. He was probably just like her and hated pictures and picture-taking.

She contented herself with sliding up next to the whiteboard that he'd covered with equations and graphs, tracing one finger along under the symbols. The numbers clicked into place in her mind, clear and understandable the way math always was for her. Much easier to handle than people. People were strange and altogether too variable. Perhaps if she'd had siblings, she thought, hopping up on the table. Although perhaps not.

The table was tall enough that even with her long legs, her feet dangled above the ground. She swung them idly, considering an equation. She reached out and picked up one of the whiteboard markers scattered around the table and started sketching the appropriate graph. It was a lovely equation, precise and elegant.

Her mom didn't get how a math equation could be elegant, but she accepted that it was if Elizabeth told her so.

Her stomach lurched slightly at the thought of her mom, and she beetled her brows, studying the graph and comparing it with the equation. There was something missing.

"It's right," Dr. Reid said.

"Is it? Because that doesn't look high enough." She pointed at one of her data points.

"Keep going, you'll see it."

She kept calculating and drawing. "Oh. Oh!"

He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

"So, did you enjoy the session?"

"Yes, very much."

"Really. Good. I think some people thought I was going to talk about gruesome murders the whole time."

"Well, that was stupid," she said frankly. "Your talk was _titled_ Applications of Mathematics in Psychopathology and Criminology. It's their own fault if they thought it was going to be something else."

He laughed. "Very true. I cannot accuse myself or the convention of false advertising."

She pointed at the board. "How did you use that one? You didn't get to talk about it."

"Oh, well. I'll show you." He picked up a map and unfolded it, revealing a scattering of marks over the topographical display. "This is a case I worked on two years ago, in which my geographical mapping produced these data points. Now, using these . . ."

She listened, fascinated, as he explained how he'd created an algorithm that had predicted the hunting ground of the murderer and enabled his FBI team to catch him. They went from there to other cases. He swiped away numbers and symbols from the whiteboard with his sleeve, leaving it stained with colored dust, and scribbled new ones, handing the markers to her so she could work out graphs and balance equations. They chattered away, interrupting each other and sometimes talking over each other, but Elizabeth absorbed every word like a dry sponge in a basin. Outside the room, kids and parents swarmed through the hall and announcements rang over the loudspeaker, but in here it was pure mathematics.

In the middle of a particularly fascinating statistical analysis, a hesitant voice interrupted them. "Hi, um, we've got this room now?"

Dr. Reid looked up. "There's nothing in here until - " He looked at his watch. "Oh."

The girl hovering around the door looked stricken at her own temerity in claiming the room from them. "Yeah. Sorry. We've just got to set up for the next session?"

"No problem," he said lightly, starting to roll up his maps and charts. Elizabeth started to help him, and he asked her, "Do you need to write any of this down?"

She glanced at the board. "No, I'll remember it. I have an eidetic memory."

His hands paused in the middle of rolling up his last map. "Really? I have one as well."

"It's extremely rare. Many neuroscientists doubt it even exists."

"They should come live in my head for awhile," he said grimly. He slid all his maps into a long tube and tucked it under his arm. "See all the things I can't forget even if I want to."

"For instance?" Since his hands were full, she pulled the door open for him.

"Oh, thank you." He frowned into the distance, and she got the impression he was shuffling through memories to find one that wasn't horrifying but would still prove his point. "I've met hundreds of people in my life, mostly through my job. But there's one I haven't seen in twelve years, six months, and fifteen days, and I still remember every word she ever said to me."

Elizabeth had the uncomfortable feeling that this was grown-up stuff, broken-heart stuff. She stuffed her hands in her pockets. "My mom says there are some people in life that we have to let go. She says otherwise, you'll just go nuts thinking about what could've been."

"Your mother's very wise."

_Elizabeth Brewster, please report to the registration desk. Paging Elizabeth Brewster. Please report to the registration desk immediately._

He glanced up. "Hmmm. That doesn't sound good."

He looked down at her, and she instinctively crossed her arms over her nametag. Stupid, because he'd already been looking at it for an hour, and also because it only showed her last initial. Gigantic tell. If they'd been playing poker, it would all be over.

He frowned. "We were talking for a long time. Is your mother waiting for you somewhere?"

"She knows where I am."

Silence hung between them. "Elizabeth," he said. "I study human behavior for a living. I've done it for close to twenty years. You've turned your body away from me, your voice has changed to a higher pitch, and your muscles are tense. These are clear indications of discomfort. Since you've been entirely relaxed and comfortable while conversing with me thus far, I'm making an educated guess that the change in subject is what's prompted this discomfort. Are you here with your mother's permission, Elizabeth?"

She looked up, and the word escaped her tongue like a bird. "N-no."

"Do you have a phone?"

"Yes, but - "

"She must be very worried. I would advise you to call her immediately."

"I'm fourteen years old, and very mature for my age." Briefly, she wondered if fourteen was pushing a little too hard. But she was tall. "She knows I can take care of myself."

"That first case that we talked about? With the map? Those data points represented girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen. They all died, badly. You're safe, but your mother doesn't know that." He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a phone. "Now, number six on my speed-dial will connect me with a colleague who can give me your mother's cell-phone number in fifteen seconds, including the time it takes to walk over to her computer. I don't want to do that, but I will, unless you call her yourself."

She dropped her head and dug around in her backpack. At the very bottom, as usual, was her phone. She activated the screen and checked messages. Six. Uhoh.

The first one was timestamped eight-sixteen AM, and Nora Brewster's voice was light and casual. "Libs, you're probably still asleep, but I'm coming by to pick you up about eleven. I know you were going to walk home this afternoon, but I've got somewhere to be. Call me when you wake up."

The second, at ten-twelve: "You're not still asleep, are you? Look, I'll be there in an hour. I'm calling Annie's mom to let her know now."

At ten-fifteen, her friend Annie called. "Your mom called. She knows. I'm sooooo sorry."

Ten-nineteen, her mother again. "Elizabeth. I just had one hell of a conversation with the Dales. According to Mrs. Dale, you haven't been at their house for two days. And according to Annie, you went downtown by yourself, last night, so you could attend the precise convention that I said you couldn't go to. Call me _right now_, young lady."

Ten-thirty-four: "The convention confirmed your registration, and that you checked in. For your sake, you'd better be at that convention hall, and not anywhere else. Either way, you're grounded until you're a hundred and twelve."

Eleven-eighteen, only a few minutes before: "I'm at the convention center." A pause, and then a shaky, indrawn breath. "Elizabeth. _Call me." _

She dared to look up. Dr. Reid was watching her, head tilted to one side, like, _Well?_

"She's a little annoyed," Elizabeth admitted.

"From the sounds of it, more than a little."

She looked down at her phone, wondering what would happen if she snuck off somewhere.

"The longer you wait, the worse it will be," he said.

She sighed and pushed the button to call her mother back.

The first ring didn't even have time to finish. "Elizabeth?"

"Hi, Mom," Elizabeth said in the tiniest voice a human throat had ever produced.

There was a noise on the line as if her mother had let out every molecule of air in her lungs at once. "Where are you?"

"The second floor," she mumbled. "I'm okay."

"Where exactly?"

"Outside the - " She looked around. "The, um, Illinois room. Right across from the elevators. I'm _okay,_" she added in case her mom hadn't heard it the first time.

"Stay there."

"I could meet you at registration."

"Don't you move an inch." She hung up.

Elizabeth put her phone away and crossed her arms. "She's on her way. You can go now."

"I'll stay until she arrives," he said, and leaned back into the nook created by the doorway.

Elizabeth scowled. Maybe it was illogical to be angry at him, but he was the only adult around at the moment. Stupid adults who thought she couldn't take care of herself. She had a very high IQ, after all, and she'd taken the train downtown by herself last night, and she was technically speaking a junior in high school, plus she had a green belt in tae kwon do. She wasn't a little kid.

When the elevator dinged open, Elizabeth could tell that her mother was angrier than she'd ever seen her. She took half a step back, bumping into the wall, but her mother was there within seconds, yanking her into a hug so tight that Elizabeth feared for the structural integrity of her ribs. "Ow - Mom - you're hurting me - "

"Hurting you?" her mother said, easing her grip slightly. "Elizabeth Emily Brewster, you're lucky I'm not strangling you. You are in such - " She stopped, staring over Elizabeth's shoulder. Her face, already pale, drained of color.

Elizabeth looked around. Dr. Reid, standing a few steps behind her, was just as frozen, just as white, his eyes locked on her mom.

"Are - are you okay?" she asked, not sure which one to direct it to. Neither of them seemed to hear her.

Dr. Reid's lips moved, but the word that came out was mostly breath. "Emily?"

Why did her middle name surprise him so much?

"Not here," her mom said.

"But - " His eyes dropped to Elizabeth, searching her face with an intensity that made her feel raw and exposed as well as confused beyond belief. "She said she was fourteen."

Her mom swallowed. "She'll be twelve in November."

He nodded slowly, looking dazed.

Elizabeth's mom shot a quick look around the hall, one of her sharp, flickering scans that seemed to take in every inch, every face. "I'll explain. Just not here. It's not safe. Room six-twenty-three."

Her hotel room, Elizabeth thought. "Wait, what? I don't - "

Her mother's hand dropped to her shoulder. "Not now."

"But Mom - "

Her mother squeezed her shoulder, and Elizabeth shut up.

"Ten minutes?" he asked.

"Twenty."

He nodded. Elizabeth's mom muttered, "Come on," and steered her toward the elevator. Elizabeth looked back over her shoulder as the doors closed behind them, cutting Dr. Reid's still-pale face from her view, and felt as if everything she'd ever known had just slipped away beneath her feet.


	3. Chapter 3

Several people were already in the elevator, and the woman currently named Nora Brewster was very, very glad for the excuse not to say anything to her daughter just yet. She felt almost sick from the emotion swarming through her, a toxic stew of relief, fury, and some mix that she couldn't even begin to name.

The relief and the fury were all for her daughter. But that unnameable mix? That was all about Spencer Reid.

Spencer Reid, standing right there, behind Elizabeth. She would have known him anywhere. He was just the same, as if twelve years had suddenly folded into moments.

Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, _shit._

She pulled out her phone and started a text. _E located. Safe._ She paused, thumb wavering over the keypad. She should add more, she knew. But in the end, she hit send without adding anything.

As the elevator let them off on the sixth floor, she dialed one of the most recent numbers. "Kilroy," said the voice on the other end, the two syllables sounding clipped in spite of the Georgia drawl.

"Detective Kilroy, it's Nora Brewster. I've located my daughter."

He blew out a breath of relief. "Glad to hear it, ma'am. Is she all right?"

"She's fine." She looked at Elizabeth, stalking along ahead of her, radiating I-hate-you waves. "She was here at the convention, like I thought. I want to thank you and your officers for your swift response."

In the middle of pulling out her key card, Elizabeth whipped her head around at the word _officers_, her mouth falling open.

"You did the right thing, ma'am, calling us when you realized she was unaccounted for. A lot of people don't know how quickly child disappearances can go bad."

"Yeah, well, I do," she said, taking the key card from her daughter's unresponsive hand and letting them into the room. "Thanks again."

"Anytime."

The door closed behind them with a final-sounding _thunk, _and her daughter said, "You called the _cops_?"

She held up a finger. "Oh, no. You don't get to take that tone with me, young lady. Not after you lied to me, recruited Annie Dale to do the same, stole my credit card - "

"I would have paid you back!"

"Oh, you will, believe me. But it's not about the money. It's about you lying to me, and coming here, the one place I said you couldn't go."

"But it didn't make sense. I came last year."

"I don't have to make sense. I'm your mother. And this year, I said no."

"Was it 'cause of _him?"_

There it was, the elephant in the room, waking up and getting ready to trample all over Nora Brewster's quiet life. "We're not discussing Dr. Reid right now. We're still talking about how many decades you're going to be grounded for."

"We have similar builds. Similar IQs. The same aptitude for higher-level mathematics. He even has an eidetic memory like mine. He's my dad, isn't he?"

"Elizabeth - "

"H-he didn't even know I existed. You lied to him, too. If I hadn't come here today, we never, ever would've met."

"No," she said flatly. "You wouldn't've. And it would have been better for all of us."

Her daughter narrowed her eyes, looking so much like him that it made her dizzy. "You weren't mere acquaintances. The way you talked . . ." She bit her lip. "It's unlikely you both spontaneously developed telepathy, which is after all unproven by neuroscience, so the only logical conclusion is that you knew each other really well. But you didn't say that when you saw his bio on the conference website. You just said no."

"There are reasons - there are really good reasons for - "

"I don't care how bad your breakup was," she said with magnificent scorn. "He's my dad and you never wanted us to meet. Are you ashamed of him or something?"

"_No._ And there was no breakup. He was my co-worker and my friend."

"As my existence clearly demonstrates, you got awfully friendly."

"You're already in trouble. Don't get snippy with me." She blew out her breath. They could hash out her grounding later; it wasn't like it would be a negotiation anyway. And their twenty minutes were swiftly ticking away. "Okay. This is what happened."

"Are you going to lie again?"

"Shut up and sit down_."_

Elizabeth dropped onto the edge of the bed and crossed her arms, clenching her teeth.

"The night that you were conceived, I was about to leave everything behind. It's a long story, but it was for my own safety and the safety of the people I loved. It was a bad time, and I turned to your dad for comfort. We weren't in a relationship, but like I said, we'd always been friends as well as co-workers."

"Wait. Wait. You worked for the _FBI?"_

"You want the story or not, kid? Button it."

Elizabeth stayed silent.

"Okay. Where was I?"

"May I unbutton it?" Elizabeth said icily.

"For a moment."

"You were sad," she recited, spitting out each word like pellets. "You went to him. You were friends."

"Yes. We were. And for a little while that night, we were more than friends."

She'd called him on her last night in D.C., claiming a rain check from the movie she'd passed up once before. She'd been able to forget everything for two hours while squabbling over popcorn and shushing him when he tried to discuss the scientific inaccuracies of the cheesy apocalypse movie she'd picked in lieu of the no-longer-showing _Solaris_. She'd never been sure why she had kissed him during the credits or dragged him into the backseat of that barge he used to call a car, just that his hands on her skin and his lips on hers were like oxygen, allowing her to breathe for just a little while.

She got up and paced restlessly up and down the room. "I don't know if we would have remained more or if we would have gone back to being friends or if what happened would even have happened without . . ."

Elizabeth, who could comprehend trigonometry before her age hit double digits, looked confused.

"Never mind. The point is, I'm not ashamed of him. He's a good, sweet, brilliant man that I was lucky to know, and of all the men in the world who might have given me you, I'm happy that it was Spencer Reid."

"Then why didn't you ever tell me about him?" her daughter asked, calmer now. "Why did I have to think I was a mistake you made with some random guy?"

"Hey! Don't let me hear you say that ever again. Yes, you were a surprise, but not a mistake. Mistakes are something you regret and I have never regretted you."

Elizabeth's eyes slid her way. "Not even this morning?"

"Oh, I'm pissed, believe me. And we're going to talk about it. At length. But no, not even this morning. No mornings, ever. I'm sorry you thought that, but I wasn't kidding earlier. I would do it again. To keep us alive, I had to pretend that I was someone else completely."

"Why?"

Just like her dad. Picked up on the one goddamn thing you were hoping they'd take at face value and kept digging. "Before I worked for the FBI, I was with Interpol. On one of my assignments for them, I put a particularly vindictive criminal in prison." She went over to the bed and sat down next to her daughter. "About ten months before you were born, he got out. And he came for me."

Elizabeth swallowed. "Why?"

In this moment, her eyes were her father's, innocent in spite of all the knowledge behind them. _Tell me that I'm wrong,_ they begged silently. _Tell me that the most logical conclusion is not the correct one. Tell me that the world isn't this scary. This evil. _And god, how she wanted to tell her child that the world was a safe and sane and above all good place.

She reached out and stroked Elizabeth's hair. "To kill me, _devochka moya_."

Her daughter's hand lifted up and clenched in her shirt, as if she could deflect the words by holding on. "Did he know? My dad?"

"No. He thought I was dead, and it was just safer that way. When I left DC, I left my job, my home, my whole life. Even my name. Honey, in a very real way, the only thing I took with me was you."

She reared back. "What do you mean, your name?"

"Nora Brewster is an assumed name that Interpol created. My real name is Emily Prentiss."

Her lips moved, sounding out the unfamiliar syllables. "What's my name? Is that fake too?" Her voice shook. "Is everything about me fake?"

Emily pulled her close. "You listen. The Brewster part's made up, I admit. But you are Elizabeth Emily, and I'm your mother, and I love you. That's real. That's always what's real."

Elizabeth rested her forehead on Emily's shoulder. "He's still out there, isn't he?" she muttered into Emily's shirt. "The man who wants to kill you. If he wasn't, you'd've gone back."

"Yes. He's still out there."

"Does he know about me?"

"Nobody who knew Emily Prentiss knows about you. It's how I've kept you safe. Listen." She cupped her daughter's face in her hands. "_Devochka_, listen to me. This is the way it's always been. Your whole life, I've been keeping you safe. Nothing's changed."

Elizabeth chewed her lip. "What are you going to tell him? My dad, I mean. He's going to be here in one minute."

"The truth."

"But - "

"You know what I always say about your focus and drive?"

"That it's easier to divert a buzz saw?"

"You get that from him. Now that he's seen you, now that he knows I'm alive, I could lie my head off, and he'd still find out the truth. It's safest if he hears it from me."

Elizabeth's eyes sparked with sudden hope. "He works for the FBI. Maybe he can catch that man."

Emily smiled ruefully, tucking her daughter's hair behind her ears. "Law enforcement organizations on three continents have been on the lookout for Ian Doyle for close to thirteen years, and nada. Your dad is very good at what he does, but I still wouldn't put any eggs in that basket."

She sighed. "You're wrong, Mom."

"About your dad?"

"No. You said nothing's changed. But now I know. Everything's different."

"You will handle it. I know this."

"Are you sure?"

"You're Spencer Reid's daughter, which means you're brilliant. You're my daughter, which means you're tough. I have faith in three things in this world - gravity, electromagnetism, and you. And this really smart kid tells me gravity is actually pretty weak sauce."

Elizabeth grinned, a small, wobbly grin. Emily kissed her forehead and held her close.

In the silence, someone knocked on the door.

They both looked at it, then at each other. Emily pulled away and went to check the peephole, half-aware that her right hand had slipped around to the small of her back, where she used to wear her holster. But it was Reid.

She stepped back from the door and looked at her daughter. "You ready, Libs?"

Elizabeth dragged in her breath, and then nodded.


	4. Chapter 4

Reid's heart thudded against the walls of his chest, so hard he expected to see his shirtfront vibrating. He glanced up and down the hall again, but nobody was there.

Without closing his eyes, he could remember the last time he'd seen Emily.

_Emily. What's wrong?_

_Nothing._ She'd pulled away, chilly air rushing in to replace her warm, damp skin on his.

_I've played too much poker with you to be fooled now. What's going on?_

_Well, I'm not a multiple Ph.D, Dr. Reid_, she'd retorted, dragging up her underwear and her pants in one motion, _but I'd say the evidence is you just got fucked._

His stomach had curled in on itself at her hard, brusque tone. But the profiler in him recognized a strong woman pushing someone away just as hard as she possibly could. _Absolutely I did, and it was very nice, thank you. But also highly atypical behavior for you._

_You're profiling me now, of all times?_ She'd yanked her bra back into place, shrugged into her shirt.

_Sex can be abused just like narcotics,_ he'd told her. _I did Dilaudid to escape. What are you trying to escape, Emily?_

_At the moment, this car. I should have known you'd be a talker._ She'd fumbled for the door handle, yanking it uselessly.

_That side's never worked._

_Goddammit._

He'd caught her around the waist as she scrambled over him, reaching for the far door. _Emily. Talk to me._

With her hand-to-hand experience, she could have broken his hold and probably his front teeth as well. But her body had melted against his briefly, her hair silky against his cheek when she laid her head on his shoulder.

_Someone's looking for me_, she'd breathed out. _I don't want to be found._

_Who?_

She'd kissed him then, not his lips but his neck, the same vulnerable spot that she'd kissed first in the darkness of the movie theater. Then, with one stiff-armed thrust against his shoulders, she'd escaped his grip. By the time he managed to get himself untangled from his own pants, she'd disappeared into the darkness

That had been his last sight of her in person until the elevator doors had dinged and she'd come striding out, practically incandescent with fury and relief.

At Elizabeth. At her daughter. His daughter.

Theirs.

His mind circled the thought, tapping it lightly every so often as if it were red-hot and couldn't be handled except in momentary bursts.

The door opened, and Emily was there. Her eyes were the same, though there were more lines fanning out from their corners. She was still slender, though there was a new softness around her hips. Her hair was cropped short now, a feathery dark cap with narrow streaks of grey. Strategically bleached? Or simply the product of failing melanocytes in the hair follicles? Either was possible.

"Clear," he mouthed, and she stepped back, letting him in.

Elizabeth sat on the very edge of the bed, hands clenched in her lap. She was as still as stone, except for the jittering of one sneaker heel against the carpeted floor.

His daughter.

She was unusually tall for almost-twelve: five-foot-five, he estimated, easily in the ninety-fifth percentile. So thin that her wrists and shoulders were bony knobs, just the same as his. But her hair, pinned back in a plain silver barrette, was as dark as Emily's, and her skin was just as fair.

Without knowing Emily's menstrual cycle or health history, he could only take the chances of condom failure (two percent), combine that with the probability of conception in women over forty (five percent), then apply the incidence of miscarriage (thirty-three percent) or birth defects (three percent) in women of the same age bracket to come up with the chances of getting Elizabeth.

In general, the word _miracle_ wasn't in his vocabulary. But when he looked at her, it was the only word that seemed to apply.

He pulled one hand out of his pocket and gave her a quick, awkward wave. She gave him one in return, a sideways twitch of her hand like the motion of a metronome.

Emily leaned back against the door and watched them both. "Well," she said. "This is not how I expected to spend my Saturday morning."

The weak joke sank into the silence and dissolved.

Elizabeth's long fingers plucked at the knee of her jeans. "You know you're my dad, right?"

"We have similar body types, similar aptitude for higher-level mathematics. You have an eidetic memory, a fairly rare ability. I feel confident in assuming that our IQs are similar. None of this is conclusive proof of paternity, of course, but it's certainly helped by the fact that your birthday is between thirty-five and thirty-nine weeks after the last time I, uh, saw your mother."

"Okay. Just checking." She twisted up her mouth. "Are you happy?"

He picked his words carefully. A young girl's reception by a father figure had enormous impact on their future self-conception. At the same time, she was much too intelligent to be fooled by sweeping generalizations of bliss. "I'm many things at the moment. I think happy will in time prove to be dominant."

Her tight, pinched face relaxed into a smile, and he relaxed too, feeling as if he'd passed some kind of test.

Now the most important thing came tumbling out. "Elizabeth, I want you to know that I would have been here if I'd known about you. I wouldn't have missed one second of your childhood by choice."

"It's okay," she said quickly. "You didn't know."

"No, I didn't," he said, turning to look at Emily.

Emily looked back at him. "You know what, honey," she said. "Your dad and I need to talk for a few minutes. Privately." She walked over to get her purse, sitting on the bed nearest the door, and extracted a few bills. "Why don't you go hit the vending machines at the end of the hall?"

"But I'm not hungry."

Emily leveled a look on her that Reid had once seen melt an unsub into tapioca pudding. Elizabeth simply narrowed her eyes at her mother and plucked the bills out of her hand. Emily aimed a swat at her butt. "Snotty brat."

"Mean old lady," Elizabeth returned, skipping out of the way.

It was clearly a practiced routine for them, and his chest ached for a moment. Then Elizabeth turned to him. "What can I get you?" Her eyes were wide, anxious to please.

"I don't know," he said, equally anxious. "Anything. Whatever you're having is fine."

"'Kay." She hesitated at the door, looking over her shoulder. "You won't leave, will you?"

"No," he promised.

"'Kay," she said again, and went out the door.

"Emily," he said, but she held up one finger. She went over and whipped the door open.

Elizabeth's exasperated voice said from the hallway, "O_kay._ I'm going."

"Ten minutes," Emily shouted after her. "And no sour cream and onion, I'm not riding home with that breath."

"Mom!"

"Sorry about that," Emily said, closing the door until it clicked, firmly. "She's not used to being left out of things. She doesn't always remember she's still a kid."

"Cognitively, she's well beyond her years."

She made an exasperated noise, resting one hip on the edge of the desk. "There's more to maturity than cognitive. Emotional development, psychological, physical, social - "

He raised his brows at her.

"Right," she said. "Sorry. Forgot who I was talking to."

"She's beautiful," he said. "Would I ever have known about her?"

All the softness and warmth in her face dissolved, leaving her expression masklike. "I don't know."

He crossed his arms. "All this time, I've told myself it didn't matter why you left or where you went. It was enough that I knew you were alive."

She jolted upright, color draining from her face. "What?" She started for the door.

He got there a split second after her, clamping his hand over hers where it grasped the handle. They stood in the narrow hallway that led to the door, so close the shampoo-and-soap scent of her surrounded him.

The last time he'd breathed it in like this, they'd created a child.

"She's fine," he said. "I've known you were alive for the past twelve years, six months, and eleven days. If my knowing put her in danger, you would know by now. And what would make you think that, Emily?"

She sidestepped that. "How did you know I was alive?"

"The fire at the motel was very convincing. It was in the news for days. We fully believed that you'd died there."

She breathed out, relaxing marginally, but her eyes still said, Explain this to me right goddamn now. "Until?"

"There was a discrepancy in the autopsy."

"What kind of discrepancy?"

"I assume Interpol faked the report when we requested it, and in most ways, it was very well done, except that it showed no evidence of recent sexual intercourse."

She closed her eyes. "Who knows?"

"Hotch. Morgan. Rossi. Garcia. Seaver."

"You told the team this?"

He flushed, remembering the awkward silence after he'd explained exactly how he knew the body wasn't Emily's. Not to mention the private discussion with Hotch afterwards. "It was that or let them believe it was your body. And that's not the team anymore. It's changed. We've all changed. But we kept your secret."

"Why was there an autopsy at all?"

"Hotch insisted," Reid said. "Actually we all did. While in general it was a well-executed ruse and would have fooled most people, we felt your death was suspicious because of your behavior in the weeks leading up to the fire."

She breathed in and out, several times. "Fine. You knew I was alive. Why did you stop looking?"

"How do you know we stopped?"

Fine, it was petty, but he wanted to see her squirm, to feel the needless agony they'd all gone through when they'd thought she was dead, and the more intense kind when they'd realized she was alive, but didn't want them to know.

But she met his gaze with no squirming, just a weary kind of faith. "Because if you were looking, you would have found me. Us."

He had to look away. "We were ordered to abandon the investigation. Your old boss from Interpol warned us personally."

"Sean?"

"And you told me, too. Remember? You said you didn't want to be found. It took me a long time to realize it, but there had to be a good reason, because you're not like that, you're not cruel, and you wouldn't do something like that to us without a very good reason. So what is it?"

She pushed past him and walked across the room to stare out the window. Against the view of downtown Atlanta, she looked very, very alone. For the first time, he realized that she'd been living inside a bubble of fear for close to thirteen years. She'd pushed it out far enough to make a life for herself and Elizabeth, to let their daughter grow up smart and independent, but it was still there, sealing off all the edges.

"You think I'm not cruel?"

"I know you aren't."

"This may change your mind." She turned to face him. "The reason I left? His name is Ian Doyle. In the late 90's, he was at the center of a criminal organization that spanned Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. During my time with Interpol, I helped put him away. In early 2011, he escaped. A week before the fire, he found me, and he told me that he was going to take my life from me." She made a wry face. "Funny thing is, he succeeded. But that's not about to stop him from doing it in the literal sense."

"He targeted you?"

"He targeted every agent who'd been part of his capture and conviction."

"But you particularly. Why?"

Her head dipped, her lashes falling to make half-moon shadows on her cheekbones. "My part of the operation was to get close to him, to learn his weaknesses and his vulnerable spots." She lifted her head, jutting out her chin in fragile bravado. "I did an exemplary job. I broke his heart, in fact." She pressed her lips together. "Somehow, I found that charred, black lump and I smashed it to pieces."

For just a fraction of an instant, Reid could feel sympathy for Ian Doyle. After all, he knew what it was like to lose Emily Prentiss.

"He can't forgive that. Obviously, since his idea of closure is killing me. So that's it: my reason. You can judge whether you think it's good enough."

She glared at him, tough and brave and vulnerable and so _Emily_ he thought his heart would explode.

Trying to gather himself into one piece, he walked across the room to lean one shoulder against the window next to her. "Nothing you've said has changed what I think. That you'd never inflict pain like that without an excellent reason. And now I think you were saving us from something worse. He threatened us too, didn't he?"

Her mouth opened, then closed. Had she thought she could hide that? From him? "He was watching you," she confessed. "The whole team. He told me, the same night he threatened me. He laughed at - about it." Her face twisted briefly.

"How long has it been since his last activity?"

"Almost ten years," she said. "The last was just after Elizabeth turned two."

"Ten years is a long time. What's his priority with Interpol?"

"Low. There are other criminals. There are always other criminals. My contact says that the only reason we're still in hiding is because they don't have definite, incontrovertible proof of his death or incarceration."

"Ten years, Emily," Reid said again. "He could be dead."

"You think I don't know that? That last activity, he killed one of the the agents who helped me escape D.C. He'd already killed the other one the year before. Butchered her. Look it up when you get back," she said, suddenly fierce. "I know you will. Tsia Moseley, October of 2012 and Clyde Easter, December of 2013. You'll know why I can't risk being wrong."

"I remember those cases." His stomach turned over. "They were . . . bad."

"Not even the word." She ran her fingers through her hair. It stuck up in tufts. "I'm sorry it had to be that way. I'm sorry you've missed out on so much of her life, and that you'll miss out on more."

He considered her. "You don't intend for us to have any contact after today, do you?" _No. No. Nonononononononono._

"I can't risk it. I just can't."

"Can I say something?"

"Can I stop you?"

"If you truly believed that any contact between us would put Elizabeth in danger, you wouldn't have brought her to this room. You would have gotten off the elevator on the third floor, taken the stairs to the parking garage, left the convention center immediately, destroyed your credit cards, switched cars, and notified your Interpol contact on your way out of Atlanta. By Monday, you both would have been different people. But you're here."

Emily made a face. "Picking up a few tips from Hotch?"

"Well, I know you," he said. "Or I did. You wanted us to meet, Emily. And not just because she's never known me."

She stared out the window. "She knows I love her," she said. "She knows I wouldn't trade her for any kid in the whole world. But she also knows that I don't always get her. That there're times when nobody in her life gets her, the way she thinks and what she thinks about and how she sees the world. Not me, not her best friend, not her teachers, nobody. And it makes her lonely."

She looked over her shoulder at him. "So yeah. I wanted her to meet you."

"And you knew what would happen when she did," he said. "I'm not my father, I'm not Gideon, and I can't go back to D.C. and pretend that she doesn't exist. I realize that we can't have a traditional custodial arrangement, Emily. I can't just call whenever I want or see her at Christmas or take her to ComiCon. But I am her father and I need to be her father, however I can."

She might have turned to stone. "This has worked for almost thirteen years because nobody knew Emily Prentiss was alive, much less had a daughter."

"_I _knew," he said. "And you're still here. I don't know if anybody's told you, but I do work for the FBI. I have a little bit of experience with keeping dangerous secrets."

She made a face at him, but the sneer dissolved quickly into the tense, pinched look of terrible doubt.

"Emily," he said, softest yet. "It's not just you anymore. You don't have to carry this alone."


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Just this chapter and one more. Thank you everyone who's been so supportive and loving of this story, and of Elizabeth.

* * *

"Wow," her mom said. "Thought you said you weren't hungry."

"I changed my mind," Elizabeth said, coming in and dumping an armload of chips, candy bars, and sodas on the bed. She shot both her parents quick, searching glances, trying to read on their faces what they'd talked about. But her mom was a champion at hiding her thoughts and she didn't know - Dr. Reid? - Dad? - well enough to read his face.

"Decided to invade China and needed to provision the army. I see." Her mom held out her hand. "Change?"

"There wasn't any." She flopped onto the bed, making a can of Diet Coke bounce to the floor, and plucked a chocolate bar out of the pile.

Her dad said, "There should be forty cents left over."

She stopped mid-chomp and blinked at him.

"Unless vending machine prices vary between floors."

"No," she said. "They don't." She dug in her pocket for the change and passed it over to her mom, still staring at him. "How did you know that?"

He glanced at the pile of snacks. "It's a simple matter of multiplication and addition."

"Well, yeah. Just . . . most people don't bother to do it."

"But the numbers are there. Why not?"

"I know. It's not that hard."

Her mom snorted. Elizabeth ignored her. "Do you want something?" she offered shyly.

He picked a bag of chips - sour cream and onion, she noticed, which she'd gotten just to be contrary. She really didn't like them much. Apparently he did.

Her dad had multiple doctorates, lived in Washington, D.C., worked for the FBI, and liked sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. That was it, the sum total of her knowledge about her dad. She wanted to know more, but didn't know where to start asking.

She looked down at her chocolate bar, picking at the edges of it. The mattress shifted, dipping downward as her mom sat on the end. She looked up. "Hey, Mom, want anything?"

"Did you get anything else chocolate?"

She rolled her eyes. Puh-leeze. She dipped her hand into the pile and came out with a bag of M&Ms, tossing them.

Her mom caught them midair. "Thanks, honey."

Her dad put out a hand and dug around in the pile, pulling out a bag of wasabi peas. "Don't forget these."

Her mom looked at them and started to laugh, and so did he.

"What?" Elizabeth asked. "What's so funny?"

"Just - peas." Her mom laughed again.

"Yeah, they are," she said slowly.

"Long story. I'll tell you sometime."

"You guys are weird," she said, just like Annie said to her parents all the time. She felt a jump of happiness. _She had a dad. _That thought gave her the courage to say, "So, um, what can I call you?"

He set down his potato chips. "I don't know. There are a number of options. But I don't really have experience in this area. I don't have any children. Other children."

"Me neither. I mean - not about children. I don't have any experience with dads. But I don't feel deprived," she added quickly. "I assure you, Mom has been an excellent single parent and she's made every effort to supply me with viable male role models such as Master Tom, my tae kwon do instructor, and Mr. Dale, my best friend's dad."

"That's good. I'm glad to hear that. You know, research shows that the lack of positive male models in girls' lives can be linked to poor self-image and early sexual activity." He looked awkward suddenly. "So. Um. Don't do that."

"Right. No. Of course not." She pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. "Father's too formal," she said. "And Daddy is entirely too juvenile. May I call you Dad?"

"Yes. That would work."

"Okay. Dad." She let out her breath in a huff. "I - um - I don't know what to ask next."

"I know," he said. "There's too many things. Um. We'll start at the beginning. When's your birthday?"

"November twenty-seventh," she said promptly. "At 3:14 in the morning."

He grinned. "3:14 exactly, or 3:14 and fifteen seconds?"

She wanted to jump up and down on the bed. "Mom! He got it!"

"Nobody ever gets that," her mom told him. "She always has to explain."

He shot her a puzzled look. "Explain what? It's pi. It would be like missing the significance of October twenty-third."

Elizabeth squeaked. "I love Mole Day. I wanted that to be my birthday for the longest time. It would've been amazing."

"If I ever had any doubt where she got it from," her mom muttered, but she was smiling.

"Really, Emily, she didn't get all her nerd tendencies from me."

"Oh, yeah, Mom's a total nerd," Elizabeth said cheerfully. "We have like a million of these weird foreign movies on DVD, and she watches without the subtitles."

"Hey, who in this room can cuss out Atlanta's many, many jackhole drivers in Arabic? Oh, right, that would be me."

"Plus she's read _Mother Night_ an average of 1.4 times a year, and that's just since I remember."

"You know Morgan still has your copy," her dad said to her mom.

"The signed one? Good. I'm glad. How's he doing?"

"He's in Dallas, leading his own team. He got married."

"What? No!"

"Married, with a daughter. Named Penelope. Garcia's her godmother."

"Oh my god. Morgan is a family man? Hell froze over."

"Hotch remarried, too."

"Well, that's not so weird. Hotch was born married. Even after he got divorced, there was something basically married about him. What's her name?"

Bored with a conversation about unknown grown-ups, Elizabeth leaned forward. "Dad, you're not married, are you?"

"Ah, no."

"Do you have a girlfriend?" She looked sideways at her mom, who suddenly seemed fascinated by the properties of the chocolate in her hands. Possibly conducting an impromptu experiment on whether they truly did live up to their claim of not melting in the hand.

"No, nobody." He looked at her mom, too, then away. "I do have a cat. His name is Sergio."

The chocolate suddenly lost its fascination for her mom. "Wait, what? Sergio? My Serge?" She turned to Elizabeth. "I'd just gotten a cat when everything started happening. I had to leave him too. I always figured my friend would take him, but . . . you adopted him, Reid?"

"Yes, well, he didn't get along with your mother, so I took him."

"Oh my God. How is he?"

"Um, catlike. I initially tried to rename him Spock, but he resisted vigorously."

Elizabeth had never thought about having a pet. They couldn't afford it when she was little, and when she got older, she'd forgotten about it. But now the idea of a cat appealed. "Do you think he'll like me, Dad?"

She watched the smiles fade from her parents' faces and knew that whatever she was about to hear wouldn't be good.

Her mom said, "Honey, you're not going to meet him. At least not anytime soon."

"Okay," she said slowly. "When?"

They looked at each other, the way Annie's parents looked at each other when they were going to say something that would be received badly.

"I'm not a baby, you know. I don't think you'll, like, get back together now. I understand about custodial arrangements. Missy Jones in my AP Physics class, her dad lives in Alaska, but she still gets to see him twice a year."

Her mom said gently, "Missy in AP Physics isn't hiding from an international criminal."

Desperate, Elizabeth tried her father. "I know you can't tell people I'm your daughter, but Dad, I could pretend to be your niece or something. It would work."

He shook his head. "I don't have any family. Everyone knows that."

"Say I'm your estranged cousin's daughter from Groznyy. I could speak Russian the whole time. I'm fluent, you know."

"Honey, your dad and I have already talked this through."

Her hand clenched around the last few bites of the chocolate bar, smooshing it between her fingers. "So - so what did you decide?"

"We're going to set up encrypted email accounts. They won't have any identifying information, and they won't be used for anything but emailing to each other."

"Okay. What else?"

"That's it."

"That's _it?"_

"No visits. No calls. No letters. Emails only."

"B-but that's nothing! That's like being Facebook friends." Not that she'd know, since her mom wouldn't let her have a Facebook.

"That's all I'm prepared to risk, and this is all dependent on my Interpol contact's approval, which I don't have to tell you, we probably won't get. And even if we do, if Doyle surfaces again, we will disappear, even from your dad_._ Do you understand me, Elizabeth?"

"No," she said ferociously. "I don't understand. This isn't fair, I barely just met my dad and now I can't ever see him? It's not fair!"

"No, it's not fair. In fact, it sucks. But this is the way it has to be."

She knew that tone of voice. Flat and final, no arguments. "Dad," she said plaintively, turning to him.

But he shook his head. "Elizabeth, I want to see you too. But more than that, I need you to be safe, both of you. This is not a good man that's after your mom. He won't be merciful just because you're a child." He swallowed. "Quite the reverse. Your mom's right. This is the way it has to be."

"For how long?"

"We don't know."

She pulled her legs up to her chest, suddenly scared again, like before. "Mom, what happens if he finds us?"

Her mom let out a sigh. "We can talk about details later. But basically, if anything happens to me, or you even think something's happened to me, forget everything I just said and go to your dad immediately. But _only_ if something happens to me."

This shook Elizabeth more than anything that had gone before, the thought that something could happen to her mom. It wasn't possible, nothing could happen to her mom. But here they were, making plans for exactly that. "Okay."

"Also, if someone threatens you or tries to take you, it's because they've either gotten to me or they're close to getting me. In which case - "

"I got it," she said. "Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to Dad." She looked at her hands, smeared with chocolate. She didn't feel like licking it off. She went to wipe her hands clean.

"Elizabeth! Not on your jeans." Her mom dug a Kleenex out of her purse. "I feel like this is the point where I should say I don't want to scare you. But that wouldn't be true. You need to understand the situation. Believe me, in a perfect world, we'd all be getting on a plane today and going back to D.C. together. But the world's not perfect."

"The world sucks," Elizabeth muttered, scrubbing at her hands.

"No argument here."

Elizabeth looked at her dad. "When are you leaving?" She wanted him to say a week, a month, but prepared herself for a day. A day would be good. A day had hours and hours to talk.

"My flight takes off at 3:50 this afternoon. I requested a cab to pick me up at 1:30."

"No," Elizabeth wailed, her stoicism cracking. She wasn't going to talk to him except by email for who knew how long and now she only got an hour and a half more? "No. Can't you stay? Just until tomorrow. Who'd know?"

"Honey, he's on call. He would have to notify his boss - "

"Just - just say, okay, just say that the convention, they asked you to be on a panel, plus your talk. And then it ran late. And then the cab was really slow, because traffic was terrible. And the airport was crazy and you missed your flight and there's not another one until tomorrow. Night."

Her mom said, "Oh, honey - "

"There is a later flight I could take," her dad said.

"Reid - "

"Not tomorrow, that's too much. But I could say I ran into somebody I knew. There's a flight leaving at 6:43. It wouldn't be hard to change it, and I wouldn't have to leave here until 4:15, given weekend traffic patterns. All I have to do is let Hotch know."

Elizabeth clutched her hands in her lap and hit her mom with the begging eyes.

"You shouldn't," her mom said.

"It's just two hours and forty minutes extra, Mom. It's completely plausible. Please? Please?"

She closed her eyes and nodded.

"Yes!"

Her dad pulled out his phone and dialed. "Hotch? I ran into an old friend here, so I'm going to take a later - what?" He pulled his phone away from his ear and checked something. "Just did. I haven't opened it yet."

He listened to the man on the other end of the phone, the light gradually dying out of his face. Her mom saw, and her shoulders sagged. Without knowing why, Elizabeth's stomach sank.

"How old?" His eyes went to her. He turned his back, dropping his voice. "And on average, how long between TOD and discovery of the remains?" He listened, staring into space. "Right. No. I know." He let out his breath in a long, slow sigh. "I'll take the first flight out."

Elizabeth climbed off the bed. She was afraid to ask, but she had to. "What is it, Dad? What do you mean, the first flight out?"

"I got called in," he said reluctantly, turning back to her. "I can't tell them no."

Her voice rose, wobbling. "You were just going to tell them you were staying here. You said it would be simple."

"That was before my team got a case. I can't give them a reasonable explanation for excusing myself from a case of this nature without mentioning you, and that I'm not going to do."

She turned away, and hurled herself into the chair by the window. She stared at the glass, fighting tears.

"Give her time," she heard her mother say. "She's disappointed."

"She's not the only one."

Was that supposed to make her feel better?

They started talking about the flight he had to change, about whether he had his gun. Of course. He was a law enforcement official. She thought, _I have a dad who has a gun._ Something else to add to her tiny storehouse of facts.

Her mom had a gun, locked away in a biometric safe. Elizabeth wasn't allowed to touch it or look at it until she was at least fifteen. Now she had a dad who had a gun too. She knew kids whose parents had never so much as touched a gun in real life, and here she was with two parents who owned them.

She looked over her shoulder at him, long and skinny like her, rumpled and disorderly. There didn't seem to be a place on him for a gun. But he was talking about it, saying something about a code that would let him fly with it.

She wondered if he would have to use it on this case that was taking him away from her.

As if she was thinking the same thing, her mom touched her dad's elbow, lightly. "The case. It's a bad one."

"Extremely."

She leaned in and kissed him - not his lips or his cheek, but a spot on his neck. Elizabeth forgot her own turmoil and stared. It was so strange to see her ferocious mother demonstrating tenderness with anyone besides her.

His hand lifted and brushed over her hair. Elizabeth flushed and looked away, and she thought that maybe her mother had been lying a little bit when she'd said they'd always been just friends.

"Okay," said her mom's voice. "I'll take care of the flight. Go . . . be with your daughter."

"Thanks, Emily."

_Emily_, she thought. It had always been part of her own name. Now it was her mom's, too, this surprising and secretive mom who'd worked for Interpol and the FBI. It was as if she, Elizabeth, had carried the name safe for her mom until it was needed again.

She looked up as her dad sat down at the end of the second bed. "Hey."

"Hi," she said in a tiny, tiny voice.

"You know, under normal circumstances, nobody would give a second thought to me staying out here for a couple of extra hours. But I can't give the Bureau any reasonable explanation for not immediately joining the team when I'm called in, not without mentioning you or your mother. And that's just too dangerous."

She turned her head and looked out the window.

"Elizabeth," he said. "These are girls your age. Four of them."

"They're dead, aren't they? I heard you say remains."

A pause. A sigh. "Three of them are."

"As bad as the girls you talked about earlier? With your map?"

"Worse."

When she woke up this morning, Elizabeth thought, she hadn't known her dad. She hadn't known about her mom's old life, or about the man who'd forced her to leave it. She hadn't known that girls her age could actually be dead. Murdered, and worse, maybe. Probably. And if they could die, so could she.

Now she knew all those things.

"But one is still alive," her dad said gently. "She was just taken. That's why they called us. Me. Her name is Katie Royce. She's scared and alone and in danger."

Elizabeth looked at him then. "Are you going to find her, Dad?" She held her breath, waiting for his answer. It was important that he find her, that he keep that girl safe. Because if he could save Katie Royce, maybe Elizabeth Emily no-real-last-name could be kept safe too.

"Yes," he said firmly.

"Okay." Elizabeth swiped at her eyes. "When am I going to see you again?"

"I don't know."

"It's not fair," she mumbled.

"No. But we'll write, Elizabeth. All the time." He managed a smile. "You'd be surprised how well you can keep in touch by writing."

She chewed her lip, then clambered out of the chair. Her mother, sitting on the other bed with her phone clamped to her ear, quirked a brow at her. Elizabeth picked up her backpack, still sitting on the floor between the beds, and showed it to her. Her mom nodded and said into the phone, "Right. Yes. I need to change a flight to go to Laramie, Wyoming."

Elizabeth went back to her dad, digging in her backpack. She'd put it in the front pocket, she thought . . . "Here. I found it at the gift shop. I got it right before I went to your session. I want you to have it."

It was a heavy pewter pi symbol on a keychain. Etched into the metal of the crossbar were as many digits of pi as would fit. He took it, turning it over in his long, narrow fingers. "Elizabeth. This is perfect. I love it."

She relaxed. "Yeah?"

"Absolutely yeah." He put an arm around her, tentatively, as if he weren't sure exactly how to go about hugging her. She slid her arms around his waist, pressing her forehead to his chest. She felt a light pressure on the top of her head, as if he'd kissed her hair.

She smelled coffee and aftershave and just a little hint of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. Smell was the most evocative sense, with the power to resurrect the oldest and strongest memories. Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed in, fixing the smell of her father in her memory as strongly as she could.

It had to last.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: . . . and it's now the last chapter. I know a lot of you want me to fix this situation, but it won't happen in this story. The best I can say is that I have some ideas that may get written down soon. I've really enjoyed working on this, even when it made me want to tear my hair out, and the warm reception has made me all sorts of happy. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and everyone who just read and enjoyed!

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Epilogue: The Phone Call

Reid sat at the desk that had been his for the better part of two decades, working on a profile that had been assigned to him the week before, surrounded by the same sounds and sights that had surrounded him in this office before he went to Atlanta. Folders were stacked just as high in his in-box, Manning's ringtone was turned up too loud as usual, and one of the interns had burned the coffee again.

It didn't feel as if it should be the same, not when everything inside him had changed. But no, it had to. Everything had to stay the same. He had to keep this new identity secret from all the people he most wanted to tell. The problem was, keeping it secret made him feel as if the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time wasn't quite real.

He picked up his pen, clicked it once to make the point retract into the barrel, and wrote invisible words with the hollow tip. _I have a daughter._

_ Emily had my child._

_ I am a father._

He put his pen down and stared at his page of notes on the murderer in Portland. He thought, _I have to concentrate._

His phone rang. When he saw the caller ID, he didn't know whether to be grateful for the distraction or annoyed at having to lie by omission to yet one more person. "Morgan. Hey."

"Hiya, kid."

Reid wrinkled his nose, wondering as always when Morgan would stop called him kid and answering himself, as always, never. They'd talked just a few days ago, before his trip to Atlanta, so he asked, "You need a consult?"

"Not today, brainiac. Hotch asked me to call you."

He sighed soundlessly. He should have expected this. "Oh?"

"So did Garcia. And Manning. And - "

"I get it," Reid said. "They're concerned." He hadn't been unaware of it. Even now, Simons was pretending not to listen from his own desk. Reid considered telling him that people who truly weren't monitoring conversations usually turned a page once in awhile.

"Awright," Morgan said. "Can you tell me why?"

He picked the pen up in his free hand, flipping it through his fingers over and over again. "This last case was difficult."

"Sounded like a nasty one."

He'd clearly gotten the details from one of the others, so Reid just said, "It's never easy when it's children, Morgan, you know that. We were all affected." Flip, flip, flip.

His friend refused to be satisfied with that. "From the sounds of it, this case hit you hardest."

"Sometimes they do." Flipflipflip.

"Not for no reason. C'mon, man, talk to me."

The pen suddenly tangled in his fingers and clattered to the desk. _I looked at those bodies and I saw my daughter. My daughter that I didn't even know I had a week ago, violated, tortured, and murdered, with the last thing she ever saw in this life the face of the man who was killing her, and then her poor body cut apart like a butchered cow._

He couldn't say that, any of it. But he had to say something. Morgan had known him too long to be put off by vague disclaimers. "Do you know the Scientists in the Field convention?"

"Atlanta? The careers one for high schoolers and college kids?"

"Yeah. The Bureau sent me this year. After my session I got to talking to some of the younger kids. Prodigies, in fact. Startlingly intelligent."

"Sounds like someone I know." Morgan teased.

"Then Hotch called me in, and I went right from Atlanta to Laramie."

"Jesus."

"Yeah. These kids, you know, they were so . . . bright. Enthusiastic. Amazing." The knot that had tightened in his chest since he'd left the hotel room eased at the chance to describe his daughter to somebody, even obliquely. He took in a shaky breath. "Then I saw what was done to those girls. All that potential, all that energy, all that hope. Everything. Destroyed. All it takes is one sociopath."

This was nothing new to Morgan, of course. It was what they all went through, what they all felt when it was a case with children. But on that case in Laramie, knowing what it felt like to hold his daughter in his arms and then to let go of her and walk away, the parents' agony had cut down to the bone in a whole new way.

That, too, was nothing new to Morgan, who had a daughter of his own.

"Yeah. It's rough," his friend was saying now. "I don't know what to tell you about that. But listen, Reid. That's why they've got us. Right? We hunt down the monsters. It's what we do."

Reid put his hand in his pocket and touched the keychain Elizabeth had given him, tracing the symbol with the tip of his finger. 3:14, the time of her birth. Pi, the most important and pervasive mathematical constant, astonishingly simple and mind-bendingly complex all at once.

Something like love.

His eyes went to the locked drawer of his desk, which held the file he'd just started piecing together on one Ian Doyle. "Yeah," he answered finally. "They've got us."

FINIS


End file.
